Reply to GCS.

Aye someone else other than GCS and me say something leh, everyone should have finished finals already right :P

Hmms Part 1 is enough already la. And obviously I don't know what Lockean liberalism is (I am a bio major! Bad idea to take on an econs + public policy major). Anyway, the irony is that absolute liberty almost always produces the opposite effect. In order to ensure freedom of choice a certain limit is somehow necessary, whether or not it is set by the government or anything else.

Freedom is good for people who know who they are and what they want. I absolutely love the freedom that I have here. However, for those who don't, they are bound to be influenced, and in fact, they might even need influence (I concede that I absolutely need guidance in certain aspects of my life too). If that is not the case your friend won't be so troubled over choosing courses for her next quarter and she won't need to ask you for advice. Your advice serves to limit the freedom she has so she won't be so lost; sometimes, I realised, in order to solve the problem you will even need to instruct her what to do. I have tried to merely give an advice or opinion by stressing to the other person that she will have to decide for herself what to do because I cannot make the decision for her, but eventually to end her trouble I am compelled to tell her what to do.

This is positive liberalism. You think it doesn't work? Yeah, of course you and me don't need anyone else to tell us what is good for us. Though somehow even you don't have a choice. That is the irony; even though you believe that you have no right to tell her what to do, and she has the absolute right to not listen to you, you still have to tell her what to do.

No one should tell us what to do because we know what is good for us. Though what about those who don't, and for their whole life can't figure that out? If we follow your argument, is society supposed to just leave them alone and let them sort themselves out? The US has groups of completely screwed up citizens who are marginalized by society. To them liberty and freedom is basically absolute hyprocrisy...

Anyway, yeah, I am a positive liberal. So? :D

When I answer your points below, I argue from the standpoint of an individual who knows who he is and what he wants. In case you wonder. Hmms, no one should tell me what is good for me, unless I really don't know.

In your rebuttal regarding coercion, you do not recognise 'harassment' as a kind of 'coercion'. Well, literally coercion requires force and threat, but isn't harassment and to a lesser extent advertisements a rather strong positive force as well?

It is not whether I am nice or not. When dealers carry out the act of advertising and harassing, almost always they have a specific target. By making you annoyed, or influencing you into serving their interests, they are infringing into individual liberty. A person under influence is not making decisions out of his own mind. Of course the law can ban anything and protect anyone it wants, but people still get 'harassed' to enter into those time-share schemes, in the end losing huge sums of money. From what I understand, the law cannot do anything for these people.

Generally government/NGO run organ donation programs do not have as strong a driving force to infringe the liberty of individual donors/recipients because they are not profit driven. To the donors and recipients it is a more free system compared to an organ market: the donor can decide whether to donate without any pressure from commercial acts.

GCS says that a regulated market is definitely safer than a black market. I am much more skeptical. That is not to say that a black market must be safer than a regulated one: but that doesn't mean that a regulated market is necessarily as safe as he argues it to be. Medics in the SAF all know that the spotchecks don't mean anything. People take chances all the time, especially in the biomedical field. Do you think we adhere to the SOPs absolutely when we work in the labs? If we really 'keep all surfaces wet all the time' to minimize contamination while doing mouse work, we will take twice the time. It's entirely up to the dealers' and the doctors' discretion even in the presence of regulations: we skip some steps because we calculated the risk and think that it doesn't matter, with the stake being our experiments, and our driving force is time. Well, with a much stronger driving force (i.e. profits, time, etc.) in an organ market, and people who are willing to take bigger risks because of these driving forces, who can guarantee that a regulated market is definitely as safe as you argue it to be?

And remember, once the patient enters the operating theatre, he has no choice but to trust the dealers, the doctors, and everyone involved in the deal. He won't even know when there is something wrong, let alone doing anything about it.

Anyway, in Singapore there is a heavy penalty for smuggling cigarettes from Malaysia, selling them and buying them, and Singapore has an efficient law enforcement system. Thousands of people still buy these cigarettes... because they are much cheaper. GCS thinks that a heavy penalty and poorer quality will deter people from buying marijuana from unauthorised dealers. This thinking shows that he lives in an ivory tower extremely typical of Singaporean government officials. Hahaha the civil service is for you man; don't try to run away :D :D :D

(And you don't you download stuff over the net too? Are you aware that if you are caught (and there are indeed people who police the net) you can be fined heavily under federal law?)

Just to let you know, I am rather wary of any research done with a commercial motive. They are essentially not false but they tend to draw too many conclusions from too little data. As far as I am concerned those research cannot be trusted unless it is cross-examined by someone neutral. I hope you understand why it is hard for me to trust a profit-driven organ market.

There is no risk associated with sperm donation. Egg donation is a little more tricky; it is still a controversial issue and please don't make it sound as if everyone in the US approves of dealers paying $600 for eggs from pretty young college students.

And what kinds of regulation do you have in mind? Ban advertising? How do you accredit dealers/surgeons/hospitals? What will be the relationship between the surgeon, healthcare workers, the dealers, the donor and the recipient? Will the surgeons be allowed to be directly involved in dealing, or should they just be workers/employees of the trade? Should the price of organs be regulated, and if so, how and why? How do you grant licenses, and what are the conditions the dealers are supposed to meet before their license can be maintained? Answer these questions? :P